Long-distance Call

When 40,000 people gather in New York City to embark upon what is tantamount to hours of self-inflicted torture--get ready for it again, this Sunday at the 39th annual New York City Marathon--there will be stories to tell. Liz Robbins, a New York Times sportswriter, focuses on a half dozen of them in A Race like No Other, leading readers through the 2007 marathon with concurrent narratives emblematic of the range of individual experience and motivation in play.

If you run one marathon, Robbins points out, it might as well be in New York, where the path through the city streets, bordered by some two million engaged spectators, can turn ordinary people into running stars and running stars into superheroes. But why would anyone endure the misery of a 26.2-mile run, anywhere? Robbins explores the psyches of some of the sport's luminaries, such as Britain's Paula Radcliffe, whose duel with Ethiopia's Gete Wami remains taut until the final, fateful mile, and Hendrick Ramaala, the South African runner out to erase a finish-line stumble that cost him the 2005 race by less than a second. The book's powerful figures, though, are less famous competitors, especially Pam Rickard, a recovering alcoholic less than a year removed from a DUI conviction that separated her from her children for months.

In each chapter Robbins sets the race scene, then breaks off into biography and rumination about a main character or one of numerous walk-ons (an accordion player at mile 14 or folks who've run 20 straight marathons). Her method can feel forced, and the book sometimes falls victim to Robbins's determination to show the outer edges of her reporting; asides about, say, a building's Dutch origins feel more dutiful than relevant. But Race finds its stride. One strong passage describes the run through an Orthodox Jewish part of Brooklyn (the rabbis look askance) and ties it to the life of Fred Lebow, the marathon's impassioned cofounder. Race gets closer to this marathon than an avenue railbird, and it leaves impressions not fleeting, but lasting.--K.K.

The Pop Culture Grid